Written by Dave Navarro, May 12, 2016, at 10:59 p.m.
Here at Slickster we’re always exited do get our hands on new and upcoming indie games, which is why we jumped at the opportunity to take a look at InSomnia. We covered the game here, but now we some time to sit down with Anatoliy Guyduk and ask him some questions about InSomnia.
Interview with InSomnia Creator Anatoliy Guyduk
Slickster: First and foremost, I have to ask what inspired the decision to release such a massive amount of gameplay as a demo? With the trend of modern gaming moving away from the demo in favor of beta/early access, why the demo?
Guyduk: We wouldn’t say that it’s a demo, in a general meaning. It’s more like a presentation of our development progress during last year. We are not even considering this as an early access to the game, as EA will be an almost finished product for us to show. The “Prologue” is something that we are wanting to use, almost like a tutorial to InSomnia – whereupon completion, the player will then have to create their character for the main game.
On first play through of the released beta, one of the first things I noticed was the lack of hand-holding. What inspired that design choice, and does it reflect the choice to make the game as open feeling as it is?
This is something that we decided to do from the very beginning. An effort’s required to finish the game. No markers on the map, no hand-holding, even in the “Prologue” itself, Typer is told to “find his own way and not to act like a child.” This is how we see gameplay, not a really modern way, of course, but this is exactly what we like about old school RPGs and we consciously made the decision to not hand hold the player.
Are you at all worried that the gaming community won’t respond well to the lack of hand-holding? Does the learning curve scare new players?
No, we are not really. In fact we hope this will add some interest and pleasure for people to play the game. Let’s all remember the forgotten old art of solving complicated tasks and receiving loads of self-satisfaction afterwards.
Obviously InSomnia has a unique setting. Beyond Bioshock and Fallout, what inspired the setting?
We’ve been inspired by many games including Fallout, Planescape Torment, and Bioshock as well. However, I feel like movies had even greater impact on what we do now: Blade Runner, Metropolis, Dead Man Letters, and A Boy and His Dog.
InSomnia is on it’s second attempt at a Kickstarter campaign. What was the experience like during your first campaign and the decision to ultimately pull it?
We received a great experience in terms of communicating with gaming communities via Kickstarter. We gathered piles of feedback, which helped us to drastically improve InSomnia. Yes, our very first campaign we kind of failed telling people what exactly we were up to, so we decided that we should make a better concept that would be more understandable to people. Basically one of the best things about Kickstarter is that indie developers get a chance to work on a really non-typical game projects such as ours. It wasn’t an easy decision for us to get back to Kickstarter again, and we knew it wouldn’t be easy, but we’ve made our call. Hopefully we will succeed!
Do you feel like this second campaign is doing better than the original?
This time got even more feedback from lots of people, including such icons of game industry like Brian Fargo and Chris Avellone. Although very inspiring, our second campaign appears to be much harder than the first one. Kickstarter’s changed a lot since our previous effort. Our funding situation is complicated, though we were ready for this all along. We have some incredible help from the start this time around, and we’re incredibly grateful to the team guiding us.
The Kickstarter campaign boasts a “non-linear” storytelling style. Can you expand on that? And what does that mean for possible endings?
Non-linear storytelling for us is connecting the outcomes that the player will face in the end. Many variations of how you will handle this, or that, in a situation will have an impact, along with final decision you will make at the end of the game.
As a follow-up, what does that mean for player choice, and how much did player choice factor into the design of the story?
The choices of the player will have a direct impact on the fate of separate characters, and entire factions and the outcome of the game, which evolves around the remains of humankind who try to find a new home, a new planet, to start everything from scratch. So it’s up to player to decide the way how this journey will end, and what (and how) role he will play in it.
Lastly, is there anything extra you’d like the readers of Slickster to know about InSomnia?
One thing to add is for me to share that there will be a certain amount of surrealism, and out-of-this-world content. We haven’t showed it yet, but at some points the main story will meet vivid sci-fi and surrealism mix, and we are working hard to make them visually appealing. We talk about beautifully designed game levels, appropriate soundtrack etc. In many ways we see InSomnia as a showcase of design, writing, art and music. Thank you for your questions!